Now and Then
by domino.dice
Summary: The Time Machine: Alexander goes back to visit the remains of his contraption a month after the fact.


First bit of writing in almost four months. It took ages. Maybe I need to write more. Maybe that'll help my mental state. This is movie-based with some subtle references to the book, such as the spelling of Ms Watchett's name.

* * *

It was difficult to go back.

All the same he found himself retracing the path he had taken a month ago though this time over rougher terrain, and under open skies. The clamber down into the trenches had been more dangerous than he would admit; not that it was terribly safe to begin with, but the way had significantly changed, though the maze of passageways had remained more or less the same. This particular colony of Morlocks had been expansive, though he had seen no others to compare it to. The thought that there were more out there... how many more? He stifled the thought after an involuntary shiver. Perhaps it was just the damp chill of the place.

Despite the dangers he would be dauntless on this pilgrimage. The dangers were environmental, and perhaps psychological. The very tangible, and the entirely intangible. Though still very real, it was somehow more manageable than the dangers of other creatures, at least in the face of his pursuit. He would visit the remains of his machine. Rubble and unstable ground may slow him, but at this point he wasn't going to let it stop him, and irrational fears certainly wouldn't.

There was, of course, no way back. It was all unimaginably far behind him. He had traversed the distance, though experienced it but fleetingly. Yet this was always the case with such vehicles. A day's hard riding could get him to the north country, but he would never consider walking the distance. He hadn't moved in space, but in time. Logically he knew this. Rationally he knew that David Filby, Ms Watchett, his young German patent clerk correspondent - all were eight-hundred-two thousand years dead. Simple calculations, easy numbers on the page, but incomprehensible when considered by the dynamics of human cognition. Still, he felt as though he could go back at any time. He could conjure the images in his mind clear as anything. He could smell Ms Watchett's cooking, feel the texture of chalk grit between his fingers, recall the image of those ridiculous bowler hats... at least that didn't persist. After a faint scoff at the memory of them, he was struck by a sharp pain at the thought that it was all long over.

He wondered what must have gone through their minds. To them he had simply vanished with no trace, had taken almost nothing, and never returned. Not dead, not moved but lost. He was terribly overdue for his meeting with David. What must he have thought? Perhaps they had thought him dead. It was certainly a tricky thing to think of them as dead, but it was doubtless that they were. It was so little time for him... It seemed time was far more abstract outside of theory.

That said, he could turn around and head back to the cliff-side settlement any time he wished, though that was a different sort of returning. The first week after things settled had been alright but he wasn't good at sitting still. During the day he dreamed in numbers and schematics, most of them drifting lost in the flow of free association. At night he dreamed of times that were the better part of a million years passed, and blown away with the morning mist. More and more though the past occupied his present. It drew him away from the Eloi who hailed him a hero and called him friend. He certainly didn't think himself a hero. It had seemed an accident borne on panic and desperation at the time. Anything could have happened. The machine could have simply fallen apart. His preoccupation must have concerned Mara so, but she said not a word, opting to let him come around on his own. It would be a rocky transition.

Radical thoughts of possibly building another time machine crossed his mind. They occasionally kept him up at night, leading him to scrawl half-remembered equations onto a stiff finely-woven cloth with a vegetable dye the Eloi often used. He could feel Mara's eyes on him for however long he was up. He knew how unusual that was, the Eloi went to sleep almost as soon as it was dark. She cared for him, he knew, and it was mutual, but he had never found it easy to get terribly close to anyone. He had been plagued by a social ineptitude for his whole life. Mathematics frequently seemed an acceptable alternative. Emma was the first who could really draw him away from it. Both were crippling obsessions...

One night he dreamed that same dream that led him to build his machine in the fist place. It was rather a simple one; he dreamed that he met his German correspondent in person, discussing ideas, writing theory from the fellow's words, for he seemed to have little background in math and physics. They came to discuss the effects such theories might have on tactile things, then it abruptly reversed and they discussed how such tactile things could instead affect the theories. He awoke the same way he did those three and a half years ago, or so it was in his perception, feeling strangely clear despite the hour, and resolved to trek through the ruined Morlock colony to visit his machine.

The dark was no longer to be feared, but the habits of the Eloi since the fall of the Morlock colony had changed little. Still they ritually pulled their boats up at sundown. Still none of them travelled alone, even in broad daylight. There had been no attacks since, but the apprehension of night still found its way into his being. It was an abstract fear since he knew of no other threats, but habitual fear was a hard thing to break, so it was no surprise it rubbed off on him.

He walked alone in the starlight, the deep trenches stilling the air about him. The way before him was warped perplexedly in seemingly meaningless symmetries. Even his mathematical mind could make no real sense of them. He tried to use it as a starting point to work out what the destructive field his machine produced was, but didn't prove to be helpful. Aged and eroded, that was certainly a way to describe it.

Beneath his feet minuscule threads of water had carved themselves two or three inches into the solid stone, and in other places, near the corroded furnaces, coal was speckled with clear shimmering gems that could only be tiny diamonds. Some places were aged far more than others, and to produce diamonds there were other forces necessary that were quite clearly absent, and the odd corner every once in a while seemed entirely untouched, though bones of Morlocks still lay in such places, more intact than in others. In no place was the roof still intact, dissolved away throughout the entire complex to form a maze of trenches. It was better than wandering through pitch black caves, and for this he was thankful though he suspected he would have come anyway.

He wandered, for hours it seemed. He couldn't recall the exact path back to the central area but he felt he was getting closer as the setting around him grew overall more damaged. With a start he noticed his fingernails had grown, and after a moment's pause to check, touching his chin, he confirmed that his hair had too. It seemed the effects of the field weren't entirely dissipated. He came soon after to the place where the door to the master's chamber must have been, but now it was a well two or three times the size of what it was. He slid down the slope of the former stairs. The roof overhead didn't last long - it yielded to an almost perfect hemisphere cut through the earth, showing sky in a number of places.

Aware of his own noticeably increasing age he strode to the center where the remains of his machine still stood. There was a faint glow about the room and a barely audible whirr coming from the machine itself. He wandered closer for inspection.

The seat had almost completely disintegrated into a fine film that had settled over the apparatus. The crystal foils on either end had clouded, and the quartz mechanisms had blackened. Here and there a bronze bar gleamed defiantly through rust and dust. Part of the frame had collapsed into itself and some of the smaller gears had shattered. It was unquestionably beyond repair, but certainly seemed in fair order otherwise. He took hold of the lever and pulled it back to its resting position, ridiculous nails tapping against the bar. Almost immediately the whirring and ambient glow ceased. He considered this with pause. It still held some potency despite.

Pulling out the lever, he stepped back. This machine had been the product of three and a half years of near-constant attention. Thinking back to that time, he couldn't recall when he had found the time to sleep. After a time, he had built it for it's own sake as much as Emma's. Was there any chance to restore it...? Would he if there was? If he could, he could go back and forth between his times, even introduce the Eloi to his few friends, and vice versa. It wouldn't have to sit here in decrepitude. But would it be a mistake to do so...? He noticed his fingernails had ceased their excessive growth, and bit at them. Some sensible part of his mind told him he should leave well enough alone, but abandon three and a half years of work?

It was just a machine.

But it was an integral part of his own mechanism. The state he was in, the person he was, his construct could take a great deal of credit for such things. Like any artist would with their own masterpiece, he had become terribly partial to it. To leave it would seem a waste and a shame. The ride would always remain in his mind, the hysterical exhilaration, the melding and shifting of the world that seemed so permanent and solid. He regretted that he had not been conscious to see the journey that brought him from the falling moon to the Eloi.

Tucking the lever into his belt, he knelt to pull out the box that housed the quartz mechanisms. Screws. The first obstacle in what would likely prove to be a long course. It wasn't until some time after he had begun his fruitless tinkering that he felt eyes on him. Cautiously he peered out from beneath the dials. Mara sat in quite plain sight halfway across the hemispherical space.

He suddenly felt foolish and crawled out from under the thing, standing as though awaiting to be chided.

'Were you planning on leaving us?' She said gently. She spoke in English, for he still had difficulty with the intricate Eloi language.

'No,' he replied somewhat dishonestly, then added 'I'd come back.'

She stood and wandered over, still speaking in tones she'd use when Kalen woke from a residual Morlock nightmare. 'Do you think you can fix it?'

He looked back to it from her, still feeling foolish, and saw it starkly as an irreparably hopeless task. Once more he likened it to a work of art. Torn up, one might use glue, but it would always be but a shadow of its former glory. The overwhelming desire to try anyway didn't dissipate, but it was accompanied by the analytically cold knowledge of what the outcome would be if he pursued anyway. As his eyes lingered on the thing, he reminded himself that he came to see it and nothing more.

'No, probably not.' He said at length.

'Is that so bad?'

'It will just take...' He paused and turned towards her with a faint smile, but looked at the ground. '...time.' She returned his faint smile with one of her own. 'Did you follow me this whole way?'

'Of course. You've never left in the dark of night before. I was concerned.'

The words brought a brief image of David Filby's face the day he left, but it was gone as quick as it came. 'I'm sorry. I needed to see...'

She came up beside him, and the both of them looked at the ruins in silence for several long moments. 'I'm glad you made it, but I'm also glad it's finished.' He felt her fingers brush against his wrist. He nodded just slightly. She was patient, he knew, and would give him all the time he needed there, but he also knew that dawn must be approaching by the dwindling number of stars in the far eastern sky.

'Thank you... I think I'm through here.'

She began to wander to the exit, and paused when she noticed he hadn't moved. As difficult as it was to come, it would also be difficult to leave. He put a hand on the lever at his belt. That he would keep.

Maybe one day he could leave it behind completely.

As he turned away, a glimmer caught his eye. Silver, not bronze. He turned to the machine for what would likely be the last time and spotted his pocket watch, inexplicably pristine in the gears. Stepping over, he carefully freed it, having to pull it off its chain to do so. Other than scratches on the casing, it seemed to be in fine condition. He opened it. The hands were still, but after a moment he closed it without winding it. The hands were frozen at the moment his life changed, and his machine ended. It would do no harm to keep it that way. He left the machine to join Mara at her side. With luck, he wouldn't need to see it again. After all, he would always have memories.

And he still had his dreams.


End file.
